Commentaries

Previous

Next

The fine print in Maryland’s gambling expansion bites us again

By Baltimore Sun

December 18, 2018 at 4:04 pm

In November, Marylanders voted overwhelmingly to erase some of the fine print they had missed when they voted 10 years before to legalize slot machine gambling. It seems people had gotten the impression that this new money would go toward enhancing Maryland’s public schools — understandable given that the biggest chunk of the money was earmarked for a newly created Education Trust Fund.

It took a much deeper dive into the details than most folks gave it to realize that not a dime more would go toward schools than the law otherwise would have required; the slots money merely freed up existing tax dollars to fund other things.